Mom Over Miami (5 page)

“I got some of it cleaned off.” Sam sniffled. His lip trembled, but as soon as he saw her lunge for a roll of bargain-brand paper towels, he held out his hands to take some
and dropped to his knees beside her to start sopping up the spot. “The saddle part was easy. And the rocker. But I can’t get it all out of the nose or the ears.”

“Hmm. I really had hoped we could use that thing.” Their small church had gone through some upheaval in the past few years. They didn’t really need much space or many toys for the young children. But with a new minister and a renewed commitment from the congregation, they had begun to grow. Hannah had hoped to stay one step ahead of that growth by planning ahead for the time when they could fill both rooms with kids and the things kids need. “But if we can’t get every last bit of it cleaned up…”

He stood up and used the toe of his shoe to mash an enormous wad of paper towels into the sodden—and not particularly fresh-smelling—carpet. “Maybe if we took it to the car wash?”

“You going to ride it through, little buddy?” She dabbed at the edges of wet stain.

“No, but maybe we could strap it to the top of the minivan. You know, on the luggage rack?”

“I am so onto you, pal.” She sat back on her heels and laughed.

“Huh?”

“It wasn’t enough that I humiliated myself in front of Stilton’s mom with the nachos and the baby juice. Or came off looking like a slob in front of the DIY sisters when they stopped to find me doing my best Pippi Longstocking in pink fuzzy slippers on skunk-stink day.
You
want me to
do something that the whole town can get a big chuckle out of.” She poked him in the ribs, then spread her hands out as if to better visualize the whole scene. “Me and my minivan with an old, beat-up rocking horse strapped to the roof, riding through town like a one-woman parade!”

He covered his mouth and laughed.

She couldn’t recall ever having felt so worried, so tired, so anxious and so happy all in the expanse of a few minutes. Well, not since the last time Tessa had put her through it.

Children.

How had she ever lived without them?

“I didn’t think how it would look.” Sam spun off some more towels. “It just seemed like it would
work
.”

“You know what? It probably would.” Hannah gathered the dirty, dripping towels into one large lump. She scooped them up in both hands, got to her feet and headed off to deposit them in the bucket. “That’s what I like about you, kid. You are a source of almost boundless imagination!”

His eyes lit up.

“Boundless imagination! Did you hear that, Jacqui? It’s almost as if Hannah heard us coming!”

“Jacqui! Cydney!” Hannah gasped, or did she gulp? Whatever she did, it was involuntary. At the sight of the sisters standing inches away in the toddler room doorway, all conscious thought had fled her mind.

“Good. We caught you!” Jacqui stuck out her hand.

In one fluid movement—a bit too fluid, as it turned
out—Hannah thrust the mess of waterlogged paper directly into the woman’s open palm.

“Oh, no! I am so sorry.” Hannah pulled back, snatched up the bucket and dumped the foul mess into it. “Really. So, so sorry.”

“Don’t be.” Jacqui laughed—though not nearly as much as Cydney did.

“That’s right.” Cydney pushed past her sister into the room. She turned on her glittery tennis shoe and waved one hand in the air. “We don’t mind getting dirty. We’ve come to help.”

More like come to witness another of her disasters, Hannah thought glumly. Not that they had intended that, but more and more it seemed the obvious conclusion to anything Hannah did that involved interacting with normal human beings.

Hannah stepped into the hallway hoping the sisters would follow her lead.

Not only did they not follow, Cydney sat down at the table and began shuffling through Hannah’s parcel of mail, humming as she did.

Distraction. That’s what was in order.

It had worked with Sam. Why not the DIY-Namic Duo?

She gripped the handle of the bucket and retreated another step.

Thunk
.

Her heel clomped against one of the paint cans she had yet to finish hauling to the church basement.

Suddenly she knew just what task she could use to get
them out of her hair—and, more importantly, out of her nursery.

“Terrific! So fabulous for you both to offer your time, but we’re actually all done for the day here.” She clunked the bucket back down and shook the last bit of damp from her hands. “Tidied up as much as we can for now and…Say, maybe there
is
something you two can do to help me out.”

Jacqui tipped her chin up and shook back her short, sassy blond hair. “Name it.”

“Well, you see, when I got here this morning, I found this room being used for storage, but I knew we were going to need it if we wanted to expand our infant and toddler programs. So, with that in mind, I started clearing the way, grabbing some paint cans and carpet samples and—”

“No!” Jacqui flashed her sister a stunned look, then turned to Hannah again, blinking slowly as she asked, “Really?”

“I…uh…” Hannah glanced at Sam, who looked a lot like he did the day he came in to find the dog had rubbed skunk spray all over their living room.

“Can you believe it?” Cydney shot upright so fast that her tot-size chair tipped over backward. She raised the rolled-up edition of the
Wileyville Guardian News
, like Lady Liberty lifting high her torch, and marveled, “I never dreamed I’d see the day.”

“The day when someone would ask you…” Hannah motioned toward the pile of junk waiting for relocation.

“Ask us.” Cydney pressed the paper to her chest. “
Us
, sister.”

“I heard it.” Jacqui held up her hand, always the one to remain calm and take charge. “But let’s not go all flighty and ridiculous about it.” She fixed her megawatt smile on Hannah. “We should have seen it coming, really. How could this lovely lady
not
have come to us to meet this exciting challenge?”

Hannah jerked her thumb over her shoulder toward the cans. “I wouldn’t exactly call it a challenge.”

“Well, what else could you call it—redecorating the baby and toddler rooms?”

“Re…re…” Hannah swallowed and forced herself to say it aloud. “Redecorating? You two? My nursery rooms?”

“Don’t think of them as your nursery rooms anymore, Hannah.”

“No?”

“Think of them as our canvas.” Jacqui flung her arms out.

Out.

What a lovely, compelling, unattainable word. It was all Hannah wanted right now—to get
out
of here so she could try to figure out what she’d just gotten herself
in
to.

Think, Hannah, think
.

“I, uh, I can’t talk about this just now. Payt’s at home fixing lunch for Sam and Tessa and me. Well…not for Tessa, but…we really can’t stay.”

Hannah swept through the room and into the nursery like a miniature tornado. Snagging Sam and directing him
with a well-placed hand on his back, she gathered the diaper bag and her drowsy daughter up in one swoop, then turned to make her goodbyes.

She’d started the day with a single goal. To do the job she’d volunteered to do and to do it perfectly. And she had.

Except for the spill.

And the paint cans left in the hallway.

And the fact that she had just unleashed the DIY sisters on what she had thought would be her own quietly controlled territory.

Other than that, however, the day couldn’t possible have been more perfect.

“Hannah Bartlett, why didn’t you tell us?”

She jerked her head up to see Jacqui and Cydney poring over an open page of her hometown newspaper.

Oh, dear. What had Daddy gotten up to now?
Somehow she’d thought that by living in another state she might escape the embarrassment of her father’s lively antics.

Tessa squirmed against her shoulder.

Hannah adjusted the baby for comfort, and though she didn’t want to, asked, “Tell you what?”

“About your writing.”

“My…?” She edged forward.

“It’s adorable
and
clever,” Jacqui pronounced, like the arbiter of all things both precious and precocious. “Why didn’t you tell anyone?”

“About what?”

“This!” Cydney shoved the open paper in her direction and smacked it with the back of her hand. “Your newspa
per column about modern motherhood. Where did you ever come up with that title?”

“I…” She forced her eyes to focus on a strip of newsprint wedged between an update on who would be sending prized produce and livestock to the state fair next week and the list of new bus routes for the coming school year.

There it was. One of the worst photos ever taken of her in all its grainy newsprint glory just above the opening line Greetings From Nacho Mama’s House.

Hannah didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. So she just gave Sam a little nudge, snapped up the paper and her mail and headed for the door. “Excuse me, ladies, but we have to go home now.”

“Are we going home to get lunch?” Sam asked.

“Yes, dear. We’re going home to have a calm, pleasant, life-affirming lunch with Daddy. And as soon as we finish with that, I am going to kill your aunt Sadie.”

“I
’m a joke.” Hannah slid against the wall to sit on the floor of her vacant front room.

“No.” Payt settled down beside her.

“A laughingstock,” she muttered.

“No. No.” Payt wrapped his arm around her shoulders and pulled her close to his side. “People aren’t laughing
at
you—they’re laughing
with
you.”

Hannah shot her well-meaning hubby a look that would boil stone. “Do you think saying that has ever made anyone feel better?”

“No, but it sure eases the guilt for the people doing the laughing.” A smile lit his eyes.

She stretched out her legs and crossed them at the ankles. “Including you?”

“Yes.”

She folded her arms and refused to look at him.

He jiggled her shoulders and rested his head to hers. “When it comes to this stuff you’ve written about your everyday adventures, yes, including me. I can’t help it, Hannah, its funny. You’re funny.”

“Case closed. I
am
a joke.”

“Okay let me rephrase that—your writing is funny. It’s…it’s…”

“Clever?” She borrowed Jacqui’s description, because of all the things she could think to call her work, she could accept “clever.” Not too pretentious. Not too humble.

“Yeah, clever.” He kissed her temple. “You’ve got a lot of potential, kid.”

Potential?
The intended praise didn’t help to unknot a single muscle. “Potential to make a great big whopping fool of myself.”

He pressed his lips to her ear, pulled her closer still and murmured, “Or to succeed at the thing you’ve wanted to do since before I even met you, Hannah. This may finally give you the chance to be a writer.”

A
writer
. Her breath caught high in her chest, straining her voice to the bare essence of a whisper. “I have always wanted to be a writer.”

“I know.” He pulled away just enough to turn her face to his.

When he gazed into her eyes, she saw love and sincerity mingled with something she rarely allowed herself to acknowledge—pride. Her husband practically glowed with pride over her abilities.

She looked away, unable to accept his endearing admiration. “I don’t deserve to call myself a writer for this. What did I
do
, after all? Just typed out a few flippant notes to my family.”

“What you did was what you always dreamed of doing, Hannah. You wrote something—and someone liked it.”

“Wish you’d stop that.”

“What?”

“Making me feel good about all this. Sadie tricked me. I don’t want to feel good about any part of this.”

“But you do.”

She wriggled her back to the wall and scrunched her shoulders up like a child preparing for a tickle attack. And like that child, she couldn’t hold back the slow grin that worked its way from deep inside her being to her tightly closed lips.

“I knew it.” Payt laughed and hugged her again. “And I can’t tell you how relieved I am.”

“Relieved? Why?”

“Why? You’d ask that of the guy who has carried years’ and years’ worth of guilt over you quitting college and putting your personal goals aside just to help me pay for my education?”

“Just to help you become the man I knew you could be. The man you felt God had called you to be.” She laid her hand alongside his cheek.

“Yeah, but you were the one who sacrificed for my goals.”

“I didn’t mind.”

He kissed the inside of her palm.

A delicious shiver shot through her whole body. She relaxed, just a little, then held her hands up and out to indicate their surroundings and said, “Besides, look what all I’ve gotten in return.”

“Yeah, a great, big, smelly, empty house.” He grinned.

“Hey, this house may be smelly, but it’s anything but empty.” She swung her legs over his and laid her head on his shoulder.

“No, it’s not empty. Far from it.” He rubbed her back in a few brisk strokes, then tangled his fingers in her hair.
He kissed her cheek once and then again and then, before he kissed her one last time and murmured, “Nevertheless, I think there’s still some room around here for
your
dreams, Hannah.”

“Dreams? I have everything I ever dreamed of.”

“Except—”

“No exceptions.”

“What about writing?”

“I wouldn’t know where to begin to pursue it, Payt.”

“You’ve already begun. Contact the
Guardian News
and offer to write a column for them.”

“A column? About what?”

“About the things you write to your sisters. About you, your life. About the kids. Maybe even now and then about your strong, intelligent, romance-novel hero of a husband.”

“About
me?
About my
life?
” Didn’t he understand? Exposing herself as the total, unmanageable mess of a person she was hardly made up the stuff of her dreams. In fact, it was her worst nightmare. “No. I don’t think so.”

“But you’ve got so much talent.”

“Really?” Okay, she had an ego—even if it wasn’t a very big one. “You think I have talent?”

“Don’t you think you do?”

“I…I try not to think about myself very much.”

“And if that statement there doesn’t prove you have a natural flair for drama and fiction, then nothing does.”

Her mouth fell open. She couldn’t blink, much less speak.

Then a primal, overwhelming urge filled her chest, until she thought it would explode. “I don’t even know where to start with that remark, Bartlett. Do I tackle your
implication that I
do
think about myself all the time, or your bald-faced audacity in calling me a liar by saying my opinion is a work of melodramatic fiction?”

“Bald-faced audacity.” He chuckled. “See, you do have a way with words…Bartlett. And for the record, I never said
melodramatic
fiction or called you a liar. I just think your assertion is a bit…” He tilted his head, his voice trailing off.

“What? Tipsy?”

“No.”

“Lopsided?”

“Ehhh, not exactly.”

“Askew?”

“That one!”

“You’re saying my thinking about your thinking about my thinking is
askew?
How could you say that?”

“I didn’t say that. I’m not even one hundred percent sure what you said. But, hey, if the askew fits…”

“Do not try to kid your way out of this. I said I don’t think about myself much, and you called that a pile of drama and fiction.”

“Again, I have to defend myself. I didn’t use the word
pile
. Though you are building it up much bigger than necessary.”

She started to speak, stopped herself, started again and couldn’t get a single intelligible syllable off her tongue.

“Shhh.” He put his finger to her lips. “Let me help you out with this. I said you had a flair for the dramatic and for fiction. You’ve read and studied enough to know that pretty much all fiction boils down to a kind of fact cooked up into something more palatable.”

“I don’t know what worries me more—that you would compare my writing efforts to my cooking or that you are
actually making sense to me.” She pressed the heel of her hand to the center of her chest. Deep breath. In. Out. She made herself let go of the worst part of her instant physical reaction to Payt’s seeming accusation. “Go on.”

“Hannah, do you ever listen to yourself? Really listen?”

I try not to listen to myself too much
. She discarded her initial response as quickly as it sprang into her head. Instead she chewed at her lower lip, raised one shoulder then let it drop in a halfhearted shrug.

“If you did, do you know what you’d hear? Aside from all the nice, sweet, smart and wonderful things you say—those aside, do you know what you’d hear?”

“I’m almost afraid to answer.”

“Bingo.” He touched the tip of his nose to show she’d gotten his point.

Then why did she feel so utterly confused? “Payt, I can’t—”

“Bingo again! You are on a roll today!”

She prodded the gentle throb that had started in her temple. “I wish I
had
a roll—all this nonsense talk is making me hungry.”

He laughed. “Listen. You said ‘
I’m
afraid.’ You said ‘
I
can’t.’ And if I’d let you go on talking, pretty soon you’d have added, ‘What will people think of
me?
’ Sounds like someone who spends a lot of time and energy thinking about herself, doesn’t it?”

The dull throbbing intensified. “Do I really come off so self-centered?”

“Not at all.” He slid his hands to the taut muscles between her shoulder blades and began to massage. “Han
nah, honey, it’s not
that
you think about yourself. It’s
how
you think about yourself. That’s the root of your difficulty. It’s what’s stopping you from just taking this opportunity and running with it.”

The warmth from his hands penetrated her work-weary muscles even as his message sank into her worry-weary heart. “I wish…”

“Don’t waste your time wishing about it, Hannah. Think about it, sure. Pray about it, always. Then
do
something about it.”

“Really?” Could it all be that simple? “You believe I can do it?”

“I believe you can do anything you set your mind to. You are a woman of extraordinary abilities, Hannah.” He swept his hand up to push her hair aside and dropped a kiss on the back of her neck. “And you’re a mighty fine writer, too.”

She tipped her head back and exhaled slowly. “You are a wise but sometimes wicked man, Payt Bartlett.”

“That’s why you love me.”

“That’s not the only reason why I love you.” She unwound herself from his embrace and scrambled to her feet. Standing over him, she offered her hand to help him up. “But, my oh my, does it sweeten the pot.”

“So, you’re going to forgive Sadie for submitting your letters to the paper.” He didn’t ask. He summed up. Done deal.

“Not in a million years.”

He stood and brushed dog hair from his dark pants. “But she’s your sister.”

“And she, of all people, should know better than to hold me up to the whole town’s scrutiny. All our lives, Daddy embarrassed us at every turn.”

“He just acted like himself. You were the ones that
let
yourselves be embarrassed by it.”

“Oh? How about when we were in grade school and he took on the whole Bouquet Belles system so that he could be a Garden Mother?”

“I think that’s very sweet.”

“And after our marriage ceremony, when he whipped a tin cup out of his jacket and asked everyone going through the receiving line for their spare change because the wedding had left him broke?”

“All in good fun.”

“Fun? Maybe, but fun for
who?
Certainly not for me.” Oops, she’d made it about her again. She cleared her throat and amended, “Certainly not for my
sisters
. Oh, and speaking of sisters, how about a couple years ago, when he purposely defied and disgraced Sadie by marching with the twirling tots in the Memorial Day Parade dressed as a cross between Colonel Sanders and a patriotic clown?”

“Okay, your dad is a loon. We all know that.” He threw up his hands, but his grin never faltered. “You’d think that fact would make it all the easier for you to go with this, Hannah.”

“Well, it doesn’t.” She twisted her hands together and walked to the sliding-glass door to look out over her meticulously trimmed lawn. “My oldest sister is over forty and runs around town dressed like a safari guide. She spends Sundays digging in her ‘garden,’ which is nothing but the median strip of the parking lot behind her plant shop.”

“Leave April alone. She’s doing all right.”

“And…
my other sister
…” It was petty and childish not to say Sadie’s name aloud. And Hannah didn’t care. “The
other one
runs the cemetery—and likes it!”

“My nana Bartlett used to say, ‘God loves a cheerful worker.’”

“Of course she did, because she was saying it to the dozens of servants who would rather have had a living wage than a pittance and some words to live by.” Hannah hated dragging his family into this. Wasn’t
hers
bad enough? She sighed hard, and clenched her teeth. “Anyway, my point is that it’s all well and good for my sisters to have the town chuckling over
their
antics, but it’s not for me.”

“Why not?”

She lifted her hand and lamented, “Because I’m supposed to be the
normal
one.”

“Yeah, so? Where’s the fun in that?”

“Fun? I don’t want to have fun.”

Wait.
Had she really said that?
Everybody wanted to have fun.

And if, when they had their fun, they spread that fun around a little, what was so wrong with that? That was her daddy talking, of course. Easy for him to say. Despite his shortcomings, Moonie Shelnutt never had reason to doubt that he was loved and wanted.

Hannah shook her head. “No. No, I can’t allow it. When Sadie calls, I will tell her just how I feel and warn her that I won’t write so much as an instant message to her until I have her guarantee that she will never share another of my personal anecdotes with anyone.”

“Anecdotes?”

“It’s a word,” she snapped.